


Cast No Shadow

by Lioneliness



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: Burns, Could be gen or nah, Friendship, Gen, Head Injury, Hurt Hughie Campbell, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Platonic Relationships, Superpowers, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:20:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27478705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lioneliness/pseuds/Lioneliness
Summary: "Over the hill..." goes a little differently. Homelander nearly kills Hughie and the boys need to take care of him a little earlier in the season. Canon typical bad language and dark humor?
Relationships: Billy Butcher/Hughie Campbell
Comments: 14
Kudos: 166





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm still working on my pacific rim fic but this is just a little two-shot because I this idea and I love The Boys. I've been kinda bummed that there isn't that much fic or art out there for this show. And that a lot of it is nice sexy times when I'm a terrible little sadist with a pen who likes High Angst and Plot heavy. Please comment and reach out to me on tumblr!!! I appreciate criticism and I'm tough as a rock so you can be mean. I'm @lioneliness-etc

Hughie knew he wouldn’t be making it out of this one the second he was catapulted backward by Starlight, by Annie, and the air was forced from his lungs. He coughed and spluttered suddenly aware from the stagnant atmosphere alone that Homelander was standing over him, chastising Annie without ever leaving the register of that smooth, conceited croon of his.

“Alright, I want you to do something for me,” Hughie heard overhead. “Kill him.” All in that fucking soccer coach voice, like he was asking her to run an extra lap for slacking off in practice.

_Ok, fuck this, this is it._ He wouldn’t look at Homelander. No, Hughie had imagined all sort of not particularly dignified deaths over the past few months, but he’d be damned if he went out looking at America’s buffed up Hitler-youth. He wouldn’t close his eyes either. He looked Annie in the eye, tried to tell her with his face, as best he could from the floor of a sewer and caked in whale guts, that he would be okay. Annie looked back and didn’t move.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Homelander looked up to God for an instant, and God’s face was the dank mildew-crusted ceiling of a storm drain. Suddenly Hughie was looking at America’s supe sweetheart, as in a swift motion grabbed Hughie by the jaw and lifted up.

Hughie might have dwelled on the worst whiplash of his life for longer, if Homelander hadn’t smashed the side of his head into the wall. Hughie couldn’t tell if the wall was crumbling apart at the impact or if what he heard was just his skull. Homelander repeated the motion with the same amount of force and Hughie felt himself falling, both to the ground and out of consciousness, his body barely registering anything but heat and light and pain. The light turned red through his half-lidded eyes and for a moment he felt just warmth, then searing pain across his right thigh. Not just across his thigh, but deep into what felt like the bone it was burning. He might have been able to believe his leg was being broken, stepped on with crushing force perhaps, until the smell of burning flesh assaulted his senses. Holy fucking laser eyes, he was burning alive.

It couldn’t have been more than a second before he heard noise over the ringing in his ears. It was fuzzy and distant but the heat stopped instantly.

“OI CUNT!” Ah, the sweetest of battle cries. Hughie blacked out instantaneously.

Hughie came to realizing he was swinging in the air. Or at least his chest and arm were, something was holding him up by his armpits. There was considerably more light now, which hurt his fuzzy and swirling vision, and the air was gritty with dust. Oh yeah, and his skull was bursting with the most intense pain he had ever felt.

“Frenchie, get up there and find us a car.” He heard Butcher grunting somewhere above the dense fog of pain that was making his head feel swollen and impossibly heavy. “M.M., here, I’ll pass ‘im up to you.” Hughie tried to swing his face upwards and was rewarded with a lash of pain and dizziness that made his vision vignette like an old movie for a second.

“Whuh, I’m up!” He exclaimed, looking up to Butcher’s leather jacket hoisting him up some sort of pile of concrete chunks. Butcher looked down for an instant.

“Yeah you are, lad. We’re getting you out of here, just hold tight.” Butcher suddenly hoisted him towards the agonizing sunlight. Hughie felt like he was about to faint and vomit at the same time, but he saw M.M.’s outstretched arms as Butcher grabbed his waist and pushed him up. M.M. grasped his arms in a painful but secure grip, sliding his elbow under Hughie’s armpits as soon as possible to haul him out of the concrete.

Laying on his back now, Hughie tried to keep his eyes open against the excruciating light and fuzzy outline of M.M. leaning over him. He heard Butcher grunting somewhere beside him, pulling himself out of the hole in the ground. Annie was gone and he hadn’t seen Kimiko either.

“Hey kid, look at me for a sec.” He felt M.M’s hand under his jaw and opening his eyes got easier with his muscular friend casting a shadow across him. M.M. studied him for a moment before reaching to try to tear and eventually cut a piece of his t-shirt off with some metal bit, maybe a key or a switchblade, that Hughie couldn’t make out. “Jesus kid, we’ve got to get you cleaned off. How’s your leg feeling?” M.M. pressed the inside of the shirt to the side of Hughie’s head. Hughie could tell he was bleeding, but he was already covered in whale guts, so it didn’t seem nearly as pressing as the pain bursting from his skull and leaving him gasping even as M.M. touched him gently. _Leg?_ He could feel a fuzzy sort of burning in a patch across his thigh, worst at the top and at the knee.

“It doesn’t really hurt much?” He asked M.M, surprised at the look of concern he got back. M.M. snapped his fingers next to Hughie’s face and it took just a second too long for him to react.

“How is ‘e?” Butcher kneeled next to them.

“His heads bleeding a lot and he’s got a bad concussion. I’m not sure about his leg but he’s saying it doesn’t hurt too bad, which makes me worried about nerve damage or any burns worse than 3rd degree.”

“Fuck. How long does it take Frenchie to hot-wire a fucking car?” Hughie shut his eyes and tried to focus on his skull not collapsing in on itself. At some point he heard the slap of shoes on concrete and a motor starting up. He heard Frenchie asking something about Kimiko.

“The kid needs a hospital.”

“He’s fuckin’ wanted! All of us are!”

“Yeah well its better in custody than dead!”

“Not if fuckin’ Homelander shows up! Can he make it without one?”

“You really just keep fucking pushing it Butcher.”

There was a pause, then there was an arm under his knees and another around his back.

“Alright son, we’re going up.” Hughie felt himself lifted and slid into the back of a running car. He was looking up at Butcher, head on his lap. Turning his head made him dizzy and felt excruciating but he could tell that Frenchie was driving and M.M. in the passenger seat. Butcher passed an arm over his head and rustled something before returning to wipe Hughie’s face with a baby wipe.

“Jesus that’s a bleeder. You still with me lad?” Butcher muttered, wiping the blood and grime from Hughie’s forehead and then carefully around the wound. The skin was split along the hairline, just above his temple and stretching onto the forehead, at least 2 inches though it was hard to tell under his matted curls. He grabbed a new wipe and held it against the wound. Hughie tried to nod that he was conscious and alert, but the dizziness and pain seemed to move down his entire body, landing in the pit of his stomach.

“Butcher, I’m going to throw up,” He croaked, trying to grab the man’s arm for attention, as though it could be anywhere else.

“Shit! Hang on there. Oi! The lad’s gonna vomit back here.” There was a flurry of movement, doubled in Hughie’s eyes as he felt bile rise quickly in his throat. M.M. was shoving something back at them and then Butcher was holding a plastic bag open. Then Hughie was retching and spewing puke into the bag, head and body turning toward the front of the car.

“Easy… easy there.” Butcher was rubbing his back with one hand. Hughie tried focus on that the way he had focused on the cool baby wipe against his face. He finally was able to stop, and he heard the closest window roll open before Butcher chucked the bag of puke out onto the open road. Someone honked distantly.

Nausea eased a bit and stomach emptied, Hughie suddenly realized he was trembling and dizzy, not just from the moving vehicle. He could somewhere by his propped-up legs was a mess of blackened, tattered fabric and under that, red and white inflamed skin. His whole leg had started to sting and burn fiercely, escalating until it felt like the ass-end of a giant fucking hornet.

He’d been breathing quickly after the puking and now he realized he couldn’t slow it. His eyes settled back on Butchers worn and grim face above him.

“Son? Slow down your breathing, you gotta slow down now, hear me?” The blood-soaked wipe was crumpled against the side of side of his head again, now warm and wetter. Butcher looked up and gripped Hughie a little closer. “He’s shaking like a leaf and clammier than a whore in church.”

“Shit, kid’s probably going into shock from the burns. Keep him warm and keep him awake. Are his feet up?” He heard M.M. from the front.

“You heard the man.” Butcher looked down at Hughie and started wrestling his jacket off.

“We are almost there, petit Hughie.” Frenchie assured from the behind the wheel. Butcher wrapped the coat snugly around him.

Eventually the car stopped. There was back entrance to the basement, almost rusted shut, but Hughie heard it squeak open as he was once again scooped up by Butcher who stumbled down indoors. Every movement hurt his head and his leg was stinging terribly now; he tried to burrow further into Butcher.

“Right then, what does he need?” The basement was mostly shelves and all sorts of drug packing paraphernalia, but there was a large industrial sink along one of the walls.

“We need to get him clean” He heard M.M. say. Somewhere nearby a faucet turned on. Then someone was pulling off his wet shoes and socks, making his leg stretch and burn. Hughie tried to tell them to stop and pull away, but it only made it worse and Butcher held him tighter. Suddenly his crumpled body was lowered and deposited into the large industrial sink, Butcher’s coat being pulled away. He could feel warm water running from the faucet and pooling beneath him. His back was pressed against the side of the sink and Butcher, he assumed, was gently holding his head up. The basement was fairly dark, so he opened his eyes.

“Frenchie, go get rid of the car! Then I need you to pick up a shit ton of Xeroform– it’s a petrolatum bandage, comes in a bunch of sealed packs. Go to one of the big pharmacies. And get a whole lot of topical antibiotics.” M.M was holding a pair of scissors and an empty plastic water bottle as he approached the sink. “We’re going to need to cut his pants off, but they’re so covered in whale bits that I don’t think he could keep them anyway.” Hughie tried to look up at M.M through the pain of his throbbing head. M.M. set to work, frantically cutting down the side seam of Hughie’s jeans on his injured side.

Then there was a muffled sound and Butcher started squeezing bottlefuls of warm water onto Hughie’s face.

“Sorry lad,” he said as Hughie spluttered. He continued to douse the blood and whale out of Hughie’s hair and started rinsing the wound. Hughie looked down to see M.M. pulling soaking scraps of demolished denim out of the sink to expose the blistered raw hues of his thigh. Red-tinted water was circling the drain. M.M. turned the water down to a lukewarm temperature and started to gently flush the burn. His leg made him want to vomit again but Hughie was soaking wet and increasingly tired. He let himself sink into the corner of the sink and let himself feel like his entire self was swirling down the drain. M.M looked to Butcher.

“The burn is way too open to be exposing it to water, but I think it’s better to take our chances with water than with whatever germs live inside a fucking whale.” He said grimly.

“The kid’s out cold,” Butcher responded, after checking Hughie’s face for consciousness. “Should we try to get him awake?” M.M. moved to inspect the head wound closely for a second.

“Nah, he’s going to need his head stitched up and it’s probably better for him to be out for that.” M.M. sighed. “Let’s get him dry and I’ll see what I can do with the first aid kit I’ve got in here.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again! finishing this fic up with a second chapter. Nothing too exciting but I was really really happy with the attention the first chapter got. I plan on writing more on The Boys, I have another one or two shot and then maybe a longer one. Plus I have to keep updating my pac rim story which is shaping up to be longer than expected. Same as last time: please comment and reach out to me on tumbr @lionliness-etc

“We are going to have to wake him up every two hours,” M.M. explained. “Get him to talk and make sure he can move both sides of his body. I didn’t see any signs of skull fractures that aren’t simple enough to heal on their own, but if the kid starts seizing or if his brain starts bleeding we are taking him to a fucking hospital.”

For once Butcher stayed silent and just nodded in agreement. Frenchie had found Kimiko stumbling numbly back home on his way back from the pharmacy. He helped her get cleaned up while M.M. and Butcher dressed Hughie’s wounds. She hadn’t even bothered to sign what had happened, but Frenchie and the others knew her brother was gone from the way she carried herself. Frenchie sat beside her in a corner while she silently cried until she ran out of tears, and then she allowed him to gently hold her while she stared numbly across the room.

M.M. set about making coffee and made Butcher eat a peanut butter sandwich while they sat at a table pulled close to the couch where they had laid out Hughie, placing a pillow under his head. At some point Butcher got up and layered several shabby airline blankets on top of the sleeping man. M.M. could tell from the way Butcher stared at the ceiling after that he was thinking about what M.M had been telling him earlier, in the tunnels. Part of him was vindictively glad that Butcher understood now, but another part of him was afraid of what sorts of blame and anger were rolling around in Butcher’s head right then. After about an hour and a half they got ready to wake Hughie.

“We need to get fluids into him. He’s got to be conscious and out of shock to eat or drink anything safely though. Between the burns and puking, probably from the concussion, he’s going to be really dehydrated and we don’t exactly have a saline IV laying around.” Butcher filled an empty bottle with cold water and grabbed some sort of energy drink out of the small fridge.

Hughie was exhausted and pretty out of it when they gently prodded him awake, but he wasn’t slurring his speech and he drank half a bottle of water.

“Kid, can you tell me if your head feels the same or hurts a lot more?” M.M. asked.

“It can hurt worse than this?” Hughie responded tiredly. M.M. rolled his eyes but decided Hughie was ok to go back to sleep after Butcher made him drink a few more sips of water.

“Mate, you should sleep. I’ll check on the little bastard again in an hour or so.” Butcher told M.M after Hughie had drifted off. Kimiko had gone off to bed and Frenchie was making himself some eggs and toast somewhere in the back. M.M reluctantly agreed after reminding Butcher all the signs to check for and setting an alarm on his phone for 4 hours to change the wound dressings. He checked Hughie’s pulse one more time before moving to crash on one of the cots they had set up in the various nooks and crannies of the basement.

Butcher was able wake Hughie just fine. He was still exhausted and in pain but he drank more water and some Gatorade and readily fell back asleep. It was sometime late in the night when M.M.’s phone went off and he got up to help Butcher change the medicated gauze on Hughie’s leg. Butcher had seen plenty of shit before, but his stomach still turned a bit when he saw the burn. The laser had burned the middle of his leg, a little off center, but there was a large ring of similarly damaged tissue around it. The worst of it in the center was charred while the surrounding tissue was waxy and incredibly red. Farthest from the epicenter there was some blistering. M.M. said he would likely have to remove some dead tissue from the center within the day but that it was lucky that Hughie could make it without a skin graft. Butcher was honestly not sure he wanted to watch that happen. At this point Hughie had woken up from the gentle movements of his friends removing the bandages on his leg. M.M. made eye contact with Butcher and he knew he should keep the kid from looking at his wound.

“Oi, how are you feelin’?” Butcher directed Hughie’s gaze upwards at him.

“Bad. Tired.” They had made sure Hughie could follow motion and light ok earlier, but when he wasn’t being tested his eyes were unfocused and his face either slack or grimacing.

“Right, you can get some more sleep now lad.” Hughie nodded sleepily, and Butcher used his hand under Hughie’s head to make sure he wouldn’t lay on his quickly bruising stitches. M.M. was putting some new layers of gauze down on his leg. “How are you goin’ to remove the dead stuff?”

“A scalpel would be nice, but I can get along fine with a sanitized knife. Poor kid’s going to have a hell of a lot of scarring and probably some surface nerve damage, but he’ll be able to walk fine once it heals. The hard part will be keeping him calm if we can’t keep him out.”

“I can find him some oxy or Vicodin, maybe even morphine” Frenchie piped up, striding across the room. “He won’t be happy about it, but one dose can keep him calm while you do what you have to.” Frenchie turned to Butcher. “It’s your turn to get some sleep.”

“Not a fucking chance.”

“Suit yourself, mon ami.”

They woke Hughie again in two hours and he was a bit harder to rouse, which scared the shit out of both of them. At this point Hughie was getting kind of pissed at being constantly woken up; he was exhausted beyond belief and his headache might not have gotten worse, but it wasn’t getting any better either. They let him fall back asleep. By then it was pretty early in the morning, they were on their second pot of coffee and Frenchie had fallen asleep beside his coffee cup at the table. M.M. and Butcher drifted between scrolling through their phones and pacing quietly around Hughie.

“Is it normal for ‘im to ‘ave a temperature right now?” Butcher’s worried remark made M.M. look up to see the man kneeling next to the couch with his carefully across the uninjured part of Hughie’s forehead. He quickly got up and joined Butcher to feel for himself.

“Shit! He’s probably got an infection from the burn. Frenchie!” the man was startled awake. “Kid’s got a fever. I need you to get to a 24-hour pharmacy, Walgreens or CVS probably. Get a digital thermometer and some Tylenol. Also probably some more Gatorade, he’s going to be even more dehydrated.”

“You’re going to give him Tylenol, like a baby?” Butcher grunted.

“Well yeah, it’ll reduce the fever. We’re going to have to keep a close eye on him. He might be ok and kill it on his own but if he hits 104 we’re taking him to a hospital.”

Butcher didn’t really have a frame of reference for Fahrenheit but once again he wasn’t going to argue. He sat on the arm of the sofa behind Hughie’s head, so he could watch his chest rising and falling under the blankets.

…

Hughie woke up laying on a couch with his brain feeling so fuzzy it was practically buzzing. There was something scratchy wrapped around his forehead and he could see a big clump of gauze out the corner of his eye. He could feel his leg was also wrapped in a ton of stuff. He sat up, or tried to, he made it halfway up before his head shrieked in protest so fiercely that his vison went dark around the edges and he let himself drop back to the pillow. _Ok that was a fucking mistake._ He began to sit up again very slowly, feeling incredibly dizzy as he swung his feet onto the floor. He was wearing a pair of basketball shorts that were definitely not his own, and he could see the mass of layered gauze around his thigh, bandaged in place. There was a bit of dried blood that had soaked through. His t-shirt was his but felt dirty, like he had been sweating for days in the same shirt.

He pushed himself to his feet and had to grab the arm of the sofa, not just because the movement restarted his headache and sent another sickening wave of dizziness, but because under the bandages the skin on his thigh felt tight and the sharp sting of pulling on it gave away to a low tingling burn.

“Well, well, princess is up!” He heard Butcher stand up somewhere behind him. “If I were you I would sit the hell back down lad.”

Hughie didn’t sit, instead pivoting painfully with his hand on the couch arm to face Butcher. The foot of the leg he was trying to keep his weight off kicked a half empty water bottle and a few empty Gatorades.

“You look like shit. How long was I out?”

“Don’t you remember us waking you up every two hours?”

“Uhh… Kind of? I remember a few times.”

“We brought you in wot… 2 nights ago? Your fever broke pretty late last night, and M.M. let us ease up a bit on waking you, so you could rest. Its sometime close to noon now. So, it would make all feel a lot safer if you would sit the fuck down right now.”

“Oh… Why did you keep waking me up?” Hughie sat down gingerly and tried to itch a spot on his forehead under the bandage.

“Your head got fuckin’ scrambled mate. We had to be sure your brain wasn’t drowning in blood and to be entirely honest that’s going to be a bit of a concern for the next few weeks. So how the fuck are you feelin’?” Butcher came around the side and sat next to Hughie, looking at him while he looked down at his feet.

“Better I guess? Head only hurts if I move at like, a normal speed. Still kind of dizzy. Hey, whose shorts are these?”

“Probably Frenchie’s, they were a lot easier to wrestle you into than those skinny fuckin’ jeans you’ve got.”

“Where are all the guys anyway?”

“Frenchie and Kimiko are out getting snacks or somethin’. M.M. is still passed out after taking care of your sorry ass for two days.” Butcher nodded towards an open closet door where Hughie could see M.M. snoring softly on a cot. “Star-tits called, she was real worried about you.”

“I should let her know I’m okay —Could you maybe not be really demeaning towards her? It’s not her fault I got hurt.”

“I say it as endearment, and I know that. Almost wish it was her fault though, she’d be a lot easier to off than Homelander.”

“I think you underestimate her.” They sat in silence for a moment. “Okay so I really need to take a piss, and a shower. Badly.” Hughie stood up unsteadily, wincing.

“You’d better take this and wrap it around your leg to keep it dry.” Butcher stood and fetched a tube of saran wrap. Returning, he slid his shoulder under Hughie’s arm. Hughie gladly accepted the help. “M.M. said you’ll be able to walk fine and its good for you to walk a bit to stretch it as it heals. But take it slow, and its better you not fall while your head is still banged up.”

Butcher helped Hughie limp over to get some fresh clothes from his duffel and then to the door of the small bathroom. Hughie smiled gratefully and closed the door behind him. The bathroom smelled like nail polish and there were few bottles of the stuff in various shades of blue that Kimiko had lined up by the sink. The shower didn’t even have a curtain and was little more than a spout high on the wall and a drain in the floor, a sort of grimy men’s locker room minimalism.

Butcher sat down with a now cold cup of coffee. He heard the shower turn on and he stared at the door for a while and then at the ceiling, until he heard a loud thud from inside the bathroom. He was up and at the door in a second.

“Hughie? Are you alright in there, mate?”

“Yeah,” came the muffled reply. “Just got really dizzy.”

“Did you black out? Because M.M. said if you fainted again we’d have to take you to the hospital.”

“No, I’m okay. Just got dizzy and slipped.”

Butcher sighed and went back to take a swig of the cold coffee. When Hughie finally opened the door, he went and helped him over to sit at a table. Butcher rolled a bottle of water across the surface toward him.

“Here, I didn’t spend the last two days practically nursing you with sports drinks for you to get dehydrated now.” Hughie drank sheepishly.

“Hughie, lad, I’m sorry for what I said to you on the boat, and before,” Butcher said after a moment, avoiding eye contact. “You’re allowed to be mad at me, and I’m sorry I’m not a good partner.”

“What? Oh. Thank you… You’re actually a very good partner, some of the time. It sort of… fluctuates wildly.” Hughie looked at him until he looked back and then smiled. 

Frenchie and Kimiko got back soon after, their faces both lighting up when they saw Hughie.

“Petite Hughie!” Frenchie cheered, setting down several grocery bags before giving Hughie a warm but extremely gentle hug. Kimiko signed a sentence or two to Hughie that he didn’t understand, but he guessed by the worried look on her face that she was asking how he was doing.

“I feel a lot better,” he said to her, smiling.

Frenchie joyfully offered to cook them all some lunch and Hughie limped over to stand, more like balance really, by the stove. The group of them chatted while Frenchie whisked and sautéed, until they realized Hughie had dropped out of the conversation. He was looking at the floor and white-knuckling a steel table with one hand.

“Oi, Hughie, you alright?”

“Um, yeah, just headache and got really dizzy for a minute.” He said, not looking up. Butcher grabbed his arm firmly and guided him down into a nearby chair.

“Damnit son, don’t try to fight it if you’re dizzy or in pain. Just sit the hell down before you keel over.” Hughie kept looking at the table and holding himself steady until he recovered.

Kimiko walked over and put her hand on his shoulder until he could look up at her. Slowly they returned to talking quietly until Frenchie finished cooking and Butcher and Hughie went to go wake M.M. for food. As they ate M.M. lectured Hughie on hematoma warning signs he should look out for over the next few weeks. Hughie nodded along as best as he could considering nodding was not a motion his head approved of at the moment. When they finished, Butcher pulled out the extra gauze and scissors to check Hughie’s leg. The dried blood had simply been from M.M. cutting away dead tissue and the skin still looked pretty raw and irritated. Hughie grimaced while he squeezed the tube of antibiotic ointment and tried to gingerly spread it. As soon as Butcher had helped him layer on the fresh gauze, Hughie made his way to the couch and fell deeply asleep. Butcher looked to M.M. worriedly, but he assured them all that Hughie would probably need to sleep a lot as he was recovering.

With nothing more to do, Butcher opened a beer and sat in on the floor just in front of the couch where Hughie was sleeping. He turned the TV on but kept the volume low, checking to make sure it wasn’t waking Hughie. He let his head fall back and he felt Hughie’s chest behind it. Kimiko, Frenchie, and M.M. took turns sitting with them and standing around to watch TV. Hughie woke several hours later and texted Annie that he was awake and okay. He couldn’t look at his phone for very long without his head starting to feel strained and Butcher turned off the TV when he saw the kid was wincing at the artificial light.

Annie came by the next morning. She descended into the basement like battle-worn angel in her hoodie and sweats. She had Hughie in a hug so fast the other barely saw her cross the room.

“Jesus, are you sure you’re okay?” She eyed the large band-aid put up to protect the stitches on his forehead. Hughie assured her that he was, and they sat on the couch and chatted until Butcher and M.M. came over to join them. Hughie spaced out a few times and each time they fell silent with worry, except for yelling at him to stay on the couch when he was dizzy and tried to stand.

“So, like… What’s the plan now?” Hughie asked eventually. “I mean Stormfront is a huge concern, and I bet Homelander is combing the streets for us all, unless he thinks I’m dead.”

“What are we doing now? Lad, you just got your brain scrambled like eggs and your fuckin’ leg barbecued. You are doing fuck all for the next while. We told Mallory what happened and she’s working on some intel, but ‘we’ aren’t doing anything until you are sorted.”

“Ok, but in the mean time they’re all looking for us! And we are just sitting!”

“Kid, you aren’t doing anything until we remove your stitches in a week and you aren’t doing anything that might end up in head trauma two weeks after that. I don’t fuck around with concussions.” M.M. finished. Hughie had no choice but to concede.

On her way out, Annie pulled Butcher aside.

“I need you to tell me if he’s actually okay, don’t lie.”.

“I don’t think so right now but I think he’s going to be,” Butcher said after a pause.

“Okay. We don’t let this happen again. I’m dead fucking serious Butcher. We don’t let this happen.”

“Agreed. Never again. He’s going to have the both of us watching his back.” He studied Annie intensely for a minute. He couldn’t say he liked her much, but he was starting to understand her, and maybe she could grow on him.


End file.
